


Accidental

by Ladycat



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/F, F/M, Humor, M/M, Multi, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-03
Updated: 2011-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 02:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/207771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Um. Hi?” Willow is as red as her hair, the flush covering not just her face but her neck, and shoulders, and most of her breasts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accidental

The room is pretty much silent. Not _totally_ silent, as there’s breathing and the occasional shifting of clothes as people move and if Dawn listens very, very hard, she’s pretty sure she can hear several heartbeats thumping away. But mostly there’s silence. The really scary kind of silence.

“So ... awkward.”

Beside her, Buffy’s too frozen to cover Dawn’s eyes—a fact Dawn will be grateful for, once she puts them back inside her skull. She thinks that might happen by the time she’s eighteen. Maybe. Actually, she’s not even sure she _wants_ to see this. It’s one thing to talk about it, how cool it—potentially—is, and how much Dawn can learn with so many young adults surrounding her. It’s a completely different thing to do, well, _this_.

The moment pulls and stretches like sea-taffy, the color disappearing into too-thin whiteness with each granulation of sugar suddenly visible instead of the lumpy-smooth mass it should be. It can’t stay like this forever, and Dawn dreads the moment it finally breaks. Not because it’ll _break_ —the need to run and hide in her room with her stuffed animals is pretty strong right now. But because there are any number of _ways_ it can break and Dawn doesn’t want to be here for any of them.

“Um. Hi?” Willow is as red as her hair, the flush covering not just her face but her neck, and shoulders, and most of her breasts. Which still aren’t covered up.

“That’s—” Xander is staring with the kind of fixed entrancement that Dawn is unfortunately very familiar with. So is Spike, who is sidling up beside his boyfriend with a leering, cheesy grin that tells Dawn she is _not_ to visit the Harris home for, oh, at least a week. She’ll see bad things that a little girl doesn’t want to know about her surrogate big brothers. Like how loudly Spike likes to scream, and exactly what Xander does to him to encourage it.

Okay, so this isn’t the first time Dawn’s walked in on things. But with Spike and Xander, it’s ... different. Most because it’s _Spike_ who freaks out worse when Dawn’s in danger of seeing anything more than PG-13 occurrences, and teasing him about that takes away most of her embarrassment.

This is so amazingly embarrassing. Still.

“Yes,” Willow hisses. “That’s. Now can we _go_ and stop gawking?”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“M-me, either.”

 _That_ causes every head in the room—bar one—to whip around and stare. Tara’s the only one completely covered up in blankets and there’s some weird kind of grin tugging at her lips. Dawn can’t identify it, which only weirds her out even more, because Dawn _knows_ Tara. The two of them had the whole bondy-thing while Buffy was gone, and even Buffy’s admitted that Tara’s the closest thing to a mother-figure in their wacky Scooby family. So to see what looks suspiciously like Spike’s leer on _Tara’s_ mouth...

“You don’t?” Willow shifts enough to hike the blankets back up around her shoulders—oh, thank god—looking at her girlfriend. “It’s okay?”

“Well, Dawn probably shouldn’t see this,” Tara says. “But... it’s kind of a turn-on.”

Dawn immediately flushes as red as Willow and doesn’t object at all when Buffy finally claps her hands over Dawn’s eyes with an outrage squeal. “Tara! Willow! And—and when did you _get_ here!”

Buffy’s fingers aren’t close properly, so Dawn gets to see naked shoulders shrug. “Last night. You were all asleep.”

“And you decided the best way to wake us all up was _this_?” Buffy half-shrieks.

‘This’ was actually the warbling cry that had pulled them all from their beds, terrified that something bad had gotten into the house. Which, technically, it has. Although so far the only one that was really upset about it is Buffy—and Dawn knows damned well that Buffy is upset only on her behalf. There’s this funny hitch to Buffy’s breathing that Dawn _really_ wishes she couldn’t identify so easily. Stupid vampires sneaking into the house and waking Dawn up just to hear nightmare-inducing heavy breathing. And moans, couldn’t forget those.

Dawn _so_ needs a boyfriend. Especially since she’s now the only person in their entire family who doesn’t _have_ one.

“Um ... do you think you could give us about—” there’s a long pause where Tara, Willow, and a very naked Oz looked at each other and did the silent-speaking thing. Dawn’s always thought that it was a witchy thing. Apparently it isn’t.

Also—Oz! Naked Oz! Naked Oz, who is short and tiny except _really really not!_

Dawn feels better for finally thinking about it. She also has much less guilt as she peers between Buffy’s fingers to study just how little Oz isn’t.

“—an hour, maybe?”

“And then there’ll be explanations?” Xander asked. “Of the hi, Oz, where’ve you been for the past, oh, three years and why did you decide to turn up in Willow and Tara’s _bed_? Except maybe that’s a question for Willow.”

Willow squeaks under Xander’s foreboding look and tries to hide herself behind Oz. Which effectively flashes everyone in the room.

Four things happen at once.

Tara sits up, glaring at Willow and orders Oz to cover her in some blankets right _now_ , completely ignoring the fact that her breasts are now bare. She looks scarily compelling as she glares at her girlfriend.

Xander makes a swallowed-my-tongue sound and sways a little, to be immediately propped up by a wiggling, happy Spike. Now, Dawn knows exactly _why_ Spike is both wiggling and very happy, and the mental images make her swear that she is never going to date, ever, and the continuation of the Summer’s women will just have to be Buffy’s job. There’s got to be some spell, as often as Angel stops over for a ‘chat’.

Buffy starts snapping at both Tara and Willow about lots of things that are probably self-righteous and moralistic and totally without any kind of merit. Because Buffy is staring at naked Oz and the look in her eye isn’t ‘ew, gross, get it away’, even as she starts pushing Dawn out the door and promising to bleach her brain for her. Dawn goes with it—she’s got enough trauma, she doesn’t need any more.

But the fourth thing is something Dawn is _very_ glad she turns around in time to see. It’s Oz. Still naked, still completely uncaring about said fact, sitting on the bed like a buddha with two girls clinging to him—and smiling. Not leering, or being smarmy or even grinning as Willow tries to defend herself against a very annoyed Tara. Just smiling. Happy. Like he’s just realized what, exactly, home is and how glad he is to be there.

So ... maybe Dawn _does_ need a boyfriend, after all.


End file.
